Following a weaker-than-expected fiscal first-quarter earnings report, Apple shares tumbled a whopping 10 percent in late trading on Wednesday. The drop is the tech company’s largest in four years. Shares reportedly dropped to $461 from a September high of $705.07.
For the largest publicly-traded company in the world, these underwhelming earning results came in the form of $54.5 billion in revenue - $13.1 billion in profit. That means the company sold 47.8 million iPhones, 22.9 million iPads, and 4.1 million Mac computers in the quarter that ended in December.
The revenue figure was just shy of the $54.7 billion that had been forecast, but it was clearly enough to warrant a swift late-day market slide for the tech giant that wiped out almost $47 billion of its stock-market value. Even a record number of iPhone sales did little to assuage fears of slumping demand for the device.
While Apple has had some missteps of late - most notably the substitution of the Google Maps app for its own, vastly inferior navigation tool - the company still continues to be highly popular (and profitable). Might this market volatility be the result of unrealistic expectations for the tech giant?
Photo: Apple
via [CNET]
